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iNo. 410 



THREE YEARS OF THE NEW FREEDOM 



SPEECH 

DELIVERED 
AT THE 



JEFFERSON DAY BANQUET 

HELD IN THE CITY OF WASHINGTON, D. C. 
ON APRIL 13, 1916 



By 



HON. THOMAS J. WALSH 

UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM T^IONTANA 




PRESENTED BY MR. OWEN 
April 19, 1916.— Ordered to be printed 



WASHINGTON 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 

1916 



K-^ 



MAY 



'f D. 
3 1916 



Nc 



THREE YEARS O? THE NEW FREEDOM^ 



BY SENATOR T. J. WALSH. 



The State in whose name I am commissioned to speak in the United 
States Senate may very appropriately have a part in these festivities 
commemorative of Thomas Jefferson. It is the largest and the most 
remote of the commonwealths carved from the empire added to the 
Union through the wisdom and patriotism of that statesman. It was 
the scene of the greater part of the adventures of the intrepid ex- 
plorers, Ijewis and Clark, sent out by him in anticipation of some turn 
in our affairs through which the sovereignty of the young Republic 
would be extended over the vast territory they were to traverse. It 
has exhibited its attachment to the political principles for which he 
stood by sending to the National Congress, in both branches, a solid 
delegation of Democratic members. It is to-day overwhelmingly in 
sympathy with the purposes and policies of President Wilson and 
will give him its electoral vote as his own successor. In these cir- 
cumstances may be found some explanation of the choice of- a speaker 
to address you on ''Three Years of the New Freedom." 

I may venture to speak on this occasion as a representative of an 
even larger constituency whose rapid conversion to the party of 
Jefferson is a noteworthy incident in the politics of our thne. Barring 
Texas, not a State west of the meridian of Kansas City failed to give 
its electoral vote to the Republican nominee for President in 1904, and 
only Colorado and Nevada, stUl faithful to Bryan, exhibited any 
change of sentiment in 1908. Oklahoma, coming into the Union 
meanwhile, was recorded for the great Nebraskan. From all that 
vast country there remained, when Guggenheim became the colleague 
of the venerable Teller on the 4th of March, 1907, only the latter and 
the veteran statesman, Francis G. Newlands, on the Democratic side 
of the Senate. There are found there in the present Congress sixteen 
Democrats from that section. 

There were no conditions of a local character to which this change 
could be attributed, except it be that party ties bind less securely in 
the bounding West. 

A common conviction came over the country, revelation upon 
revelation had made the conclusion obvious, that the real power in 
government was passing, had passed in large measure, out of the 
hands of the people and was being exercised in fact by a relatively 
small body of men of great wealth, conveniently referred to col- 
lectively as ''Big Business." ^ter quitting the office of Chief Exec- 
utive of the Nation, ex-President Taft asserted in a public address 
that our country had narrowly escaped becoming a plutocracy. The 
scales recently fell from the eyes of Senator Root, and the "invisible 



4 THREE YEAES OF THE NEW FREEDOM. 

government" stood revealed before liim in all its hideousness. The 
West did not discern the evil more clearl}'; it acted more promptly. 
It turned instinctively to the party of Jefferson. The tendency to 
which it j-ielded was hastened by the last effort of the Republican 
Party to enact revenue legislation. Continued in power by the elec- 
tion of 1908 on its promise to revise the tariff', it undertook the task 
with the result that the country stood aghast at the audacitj^ it 
displayed in the act it offered, licensing the plunder of the people by 
the giant monopolies and illegal combuiations. From that time 
forth it had no power to legislate touching any great questions of 
national moment. It was distrusted by the most high-mmded men 
who called themselves Republicans, and the country at large was 
equally suspicious of it. The Democratic Party came into control 
oi national affairs because the country had lost faith m the Repub- 
lican organization. The conviction became general that it could not 
or would not act except m conformity in substance to the washes of 
the interests whose methods have been more recently exposed by 
the revelations touching the lootmg of the New Haven and the Rock 
Island Railroads. 

The Democratic Party was called to power to restore popular gov- 
ernment. It has done so. It set about, pursuant to its pledge to the 
f)eople and its time-honored policy, to enact a revenue tariff. Dif- 
erences may exist, always have existed, touching the principle upon 
which customs duties should be laid. The wisdom of the Under- 
wood-Simmons law as a whole or in respect to specific provisions 
may be questioned but no man has had the hardihood to assert that 
in a single line is reflected a tender concern for any private interest 
rather than for the public good. The income-tax feature of the law, 
which will yield 8100,000,000 of revenue for the current year, makes 
a start toward lifting the ever-increasing burden of taxation from the 
backs of the needy and the toilers to place them in some fairer meas- 
ure upon those whose demands upon the Government are larger and 
who, blessed with great wealth, f-ecl them less. The act represents an 
honest effort to translate the popular will with respect to the national 
revenues into law.^ 

Since the panic of 1907, when practically every bank in the country 
suspended, the necessity for a reform of our banking and currency 
laws had been universally recognized. For six years the Repub- 
lican Party had labored with the problem without being able to 
advance a bill be3"ond the committee stage. Aldrich introduced 
his famous measure which went to the Finance Committee and never 
came out. Many believe it was framed to perpetuate the vicious 
control of the money system of the country by the great banking 
interests of New York. Whether it was or was not, the country 
refused to take a banking and currency law framed by Senator Aid- 
rich and the Republican leaders associated with him.' Within three 
months after the tariff bill was disposed of the Democratic adminis- 
tration had given to the Nation a banking and currency system so 
admirably fitted to its needs as to evoke universal encomium. In 
actual operation it has met every expectation of its most sanguine 
friends. Its permanency is no longer a subject of speculation.-' It is 
exquisitely adjusted to the genius of our people and the spirit of our 
institutions. But whatever may be its defects, the country is en- 
tirely satisfied that it was conceived and enacted in an honest desire 
to subserve the public interests. 



THKEE YEAES OF THE NEW FREEDOM. 5 

The trust evil had contmued despite the ancient law into which 
more recent decisions had infused some vigor. Supplementary legis- 
lation had become a recognized necessity, but the country declined to 
give its approval to any of the numberless legislative proposals 
dealing with the subject before a Congress in which the Republican 
Party was dommant, lest it should be found eventually tKat the law 
had been emasculated mstead of strengthened. The last Congress 
met this demand without a suspicion being raised of a solicitude for 
monopolistic organizations that might be helpful politically on the one 
hand or of a disposition to harass business enterprises because of their 
size in response to popular clamor on the other. ^ 

As an incident of a quite general raid upon the public lands valuable 
for timber, coal, and oil a plot had been revealed to purloin the rich 
coal deposits of Alaska. Out of this grew the Ballir ger-Pinchot 
controversy resulting in the dismissal from the service of the one chief 
participant and the resignation of the other. Justly or unjustly, the 
opi: ion prevailed that the Alaska looters had been contributors to 
the Repubhcan cam.paign fund and were to be allowed to get away 
with the booty. >-To protect them from spoliation all lands in the 
Territory valuable on accomit of the coal m them were withdrawn 
from entry awaiting the enactment of appropriate legislation that 
woidd permit the development of these lands without riskmg their 
absorption by monopolizing interests. Seven years passed, however, 
and nothing was done. Meanwhile, the Alaska people heated their 
houses, cooked their meals, operated their gold dredges, and ran their 
little railroads with coal imported from British Columbia or oil 
brought from C?Jifornia. Nothing was done because the com"; try 
was suspicious that any measure emanatmg from a Republican Con- 
gress, subject to the mfluences that were known to be powerful in 
the councils of its leaders would offer oj)2Dortunities for pillage. The 
Sixty-third Congress promptly enacted a law openmg the coal lands 
of Alaska, so very generally approved that it passed both Houses 
without the formality of a roll call m either. Without known" g much 
about it in detail the country was satisfied to have the coal lands of 
Alaska opened under any law that a Democratic Congress would 
devise, that Secretary Lane would approve, and that President 
Wilson would sign. 

It was the same wdth respect to water powers. The country would 
not trust the Republican Party constituted or directed as it was 
to dispose of these tremendous natural resources. Development 
ceased in 1908 because congressional authority was withlield. The 
subject is being dealt with by the present Congress/ 

Bills for the reorganization of the Arm}^ are now engaging its 
attention, and kindred measures for the common defense, to which 
it is doubtful if the acquiescence of the Nation could be secured were 
they brought forward in the midst of the distrust which paralyzed 
even the well-meant efforts of some of its predecessors. 

A tariff commission, long discussed, will be authorized at the 
present session, but it will be a commission that will assemble facts 
to aid Congress in levying duties necessary to produce the requisite 
revenue and to make readjusftnents from time to time as required 
by the public interests. It wid justif}^ its existence by pointing out 
particulars in which the rates may be lowered rather than raised, and 
it will arm the committees with information concerning industries 



6 THREE YEARS OP THE NEW FREEDOM. 

which will make specious appeals at the close of the war for duties 
that are unwarranted and oppressive. 

Rural credits will claim the attention of Congress next week, if 
my friend Hollis can have his way. 

'Time forbids, and it is not to the present purpose, that the long list 
of legislative achievements of the administration now happily 
directing national affairs be referred to in detail. They have been 
possible because the National Congress enjoys a freedom to which 
it has long been alien. The majority are under no constraint because 
of obligations incurred in the expectation that they would be met 
with Govermiient favors. Their work has progressed unchecked by 
any current opinion that any unseen hands molded it. 

The fruits of popidar government restored are fast being garnered, 
and, save for a disagreeable but necessary police duty in Mexico, 
we enjoy profound peace in the midst of a world war surpassing in 
magnitude and horror any armed conflict in which mankind ever 
engaged. One by one the nations arc being engulfed in its awful 
vortex. Prudence and sagacity must continue to prevail if we are 
to enjoy uninterruptedly the blessings of peace. The country with 
one common voice applauded the President's proclamation of 
neutrality. No one at the time suggested that the quarrel was any 
affair of ours, and no less harmful issue can be raised than that we 
should have made or ought to make it such. 

We look with equanimity on perils passed and soon forget them. 
In the abounding prosperity of the past year the memory of the 
trials of the two that preceded it is already dim. The change in the 
administration, foreshadowed for a year, was naturally disturbing 
to business, particularly in view of the ambitious legislative program 
of the successful party, afterwards resolutely carried out. Coming 
into power in consequence of divergent views concerning domes- 
tic pohcies, foreign complications of a most extraordinary charac- 
ter — troubles in Mexico, troubles with Japan, troubles in China, 
speedily confronted us. In the midst of these conditions, naturally 
calculated to excite apprehension, if not alarm, the Governm.ents of 
the leading nations of Europe anticipating the early approach of 
"the day" redoubled their eft'orts to accumulate gold. They had 
been draining the world's supply into their coffers for two years 
before the storm broke. During that period France added to her 
normal supply $170,000,000; Russia, $150,000,000; and Germany, 
$100,000,000. Investment m.oney supplied in large measure in 
normal times from Euro{)ean centers disappeared overnight. Enter- 
prises that depended upon foreign capital were incontinently, not 
to say precipitately, dropped. 

Then the explosion came and the whole system of the world's 
exchanges blew up. Commerce with Germany v/as all but cut olf, with 
the allies imperiled and with neutral nations subjected to all sorts 
of annoyances. Ocean transportation was demoralized and even 
communication embarrassed. Our European creditors with claims 
presently maturing or past due to the amount of .$300,000,000 were 
clamoring for payment. The various devices to which resort was 
had to extricate the country from the ruinous conditions in which 
the war had involved it, I shall not take the time to recaU. But I 
may be permitted to say in this connection that never in the history 
of these United States was more consummate skill displayed in the 



THEEE YEARS OF THE NEW FREEDOM. 7 

conduct of the financial affairs of the Government or a higher order 
of talent exhibited than that which, in that period of stress, the 
Nation commanded from Hon. William G. McAdoo, Secretary of the 
Treasury. 

It is but just that the remarkable achievements of the past three 
eventful years should be intimately associated in the public mind, as 
they are, with the masterful character whom Providence and his 
countrymen in a seasonable hour called to the position of Chief 
Magistrate of the Republic. His vigorous and commanding intellect, 
his supreme patriotism, permeates them aU. 

Why should the country choose to return to the odious thralldom 
of a system of government best typified by Mark Hanna ? Is there 
not warning enough in the Gary dinner ? When, if ever, had we more 
need of a man in the White House who, with the patience of Lincoln, 
prepares for war, yet shuns it as the supreme calamity that may befall 
a nation, in whose heart is a ready response to the fervent prayers 
that nightly go up from millions of homes in this happy land that 
God may continue to preserve it in peace ? 

o 



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